World urged to protect Homs

BEIRUT (AP) — Syria’s main opposition bloc today urged the international community to take action to protect civilians in the cities of Homs and Daraa that have been targeted by military as part of a government campaign to regain control of the territory it lost to the opposition.

The appeal comes as opposition figures meet in Turkey to elect a new leadership, including an interim government that would try to run rebel-held territories in Syria.

The Syrian National Coalition appealed to the United Nations and Western countries that have supported the opposition in Syria’s civil war “to intervene immediately” and provide food and medicine to the besieged, rebel-held areas of the central city of Homs and Daraa in the south.

FITCHBURG, Mass. (AP) — An 8-year-old Massachusetts boy is being credited with helping saving his father after their car crashed through a guardrail and landed upside down on a sandbar in the middle of a river. Authorities say Eugenio Garcia of Fitchburg was trapped in the vehicle in the Nashua River after the crash, which occurred at about 3 a.m. Thursday. But his son, 8-year-old Joshua, wr